Vodka Eyeballing, the first trend you never need to try

“That sounds like the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” opined Alex Fast of the East Village. Stupid indeed, but is it really catching on? The Daily Mail did find one 22-year-old woman whose eye is permanently scarred by vodka eyeballing. “I’m in constant pain because of what I did,” she says. “And I’m terrified that it will get worse. I wish I could turn the clock back and change things. But I can’t.” The Mail also says this is “a popular nightclub trick performed by waitresses for tips” in Las Vegas. And there are hundreds of YouTube videos of people supposedly knocking back vodka eyeball shots. So, good enough; let’s call it a trend and cut to the scaremongering: Your children are coming home from college blind in one eye, you know!

But why? CBS2 doesn’t actually have any attributable quotes in their segment, but they watched a lot of the YouTube videos and report that “the pain gives way to an instant high and then a deeper state of drunkenness.” Which sounds pretty boss, because it’s so annoying waiting around for vodka to hit your bloodstream. However, Dr. Richard Rosen of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary warns, “It’s like using paint stripper on the surface of your eye.” Okay, then, definitely sounds like something you want to avoid… unless of course somebody dares you.